Addition foundation, fixture fixation

Work on our addition is proceeding faster than I can document it in photos. They broke ground on Monday (the picture above was taken by Lisa on Monday night), unearthing enormous boulders. (I now fully believe the story that the stone fireplace in our basement was built from rock found on site by the builders.) By mid-day Wednesday, despite heavy rains in the morning, they had poured the foundation. And yesterday they removed the concrete frames, waterproofed the foundation exterior, and left it to cure. I will have pictures of the foundation shortly.

The site work the team has done so far is impressive. That one big boulder isn’t the only one in that rock pile, and a few of its friends are visible at the bottom of the hole. (Fortunately, unlike a lot of our neighbors, we don’t sit directly on the massive rock ledge under Arlington Heights, but it’s clearly not much further down.) And they removed the crumbling stone wall that sat next to the garage , and tore up the driveway pavement around the defunct drywell and the scary French drain that was illegally connected into our main sewage outflow.Part of this contract will include capping the connection to the sewage system, and putting a proper drywell in at the base of the driveway. At last.

And last night we went and resolved at least some questions about bathroom fixtures. The addition will have two bathrooms, one at basement level (which, as you’ll note in the picture above and the architect’s drawing I posted previously, is above ground in the back), and one on the first floor in our new master suite. So we had fun chasing around with the consultant and picking pieces.

The fun is going to come to an abrupt end shortly. Once the foundation work is done and they backfill the hole and cart away the excess dirt, we’ll be bringing a storage pod onsite and emptying the storage room, utility room, and first floor spare bedroom to prepare for the Cutting of the House Wall. And then the disruptive part of the process begins…